"I_"
"You do it! Goddammit, Fenn, you do it, and that's all there is to it. Or I will have you up on charges and instead of going home, you'll go to Portsmouth."
This was bullshit, of course, and Donny saw through it in a second. It was all bullshit, because if Swagger went into the valley without security, he was not coming back.
He simply was not. That's what the physics of firepower decreed, and the physics of firepower were the iron realities of war. There was no appeal.
He was throwing his life away for some strangers in a camp he'd never see. He knew it, had known it all along.
It was his way. More like Trig: hungry to die, as if the war were so inside him he knew he could not live without it, there would be no life to go home to. He had kept himself hard and pure just for this one mad moment when he could take on a battalion with a rifle, and if he could not live, it was also clear that he would fight to the very end. It was as if he knew there would be no place for warriors in any other world, and so he may as well embrace his fate, not dodge it.
"Jesus, Bob--" "You got it square?"
"Yes."
"You are a good kid. You go back to the world and that beautiful girl. You go to her and you put all this bad bullshit behind you, do you copy?"
"Roger."
"Roger. Time to hunt. Sierra-Bravo-Four, last transmission, and out."
And, with the sniper's gift for subtle, swift movement, Bob then seemed to vanish. He slithered off down the hill to the low fog without looking back.
Bob worked down through the foliage, aware that he was clicking into the zone. He had to put it all behind him.
There could be nothing in his head except mission, no other memories or doubts, no tremor of hesitation to play across the nerves of his shooting. He tried to get into his war face, to become, in some way, war. It was a gift his people had, his father had won the Medal of Honor in the big one against the Japs, messy business on Iwo Jima, and then come home to get the blue ribbon from Harry Truman and get blowed out of his socks ten years later by a no-account piece of trash in a cornfield. There were other soldiers in the line too: hard, proud men, true sons of Arkansas, who had two gifts: to shoot and see something die, and to work like hogs the long hot day. It wasn't much, it's what they had. But there was also a cloud of melancholy attached to the clan--off and on, over the Swagger generations back to that strange fellow and his wife who'd shown up in Tennessee in 1786 from who knew where, they'd been a line of killers and lonely boys, exiles.
There was a blackness in them. He'd seen it in his father, who never spoke of war, and was as beloved as a man in a backwater like Blue Eye, Arkansas, could be, even more so than Sam Vincent, the county prosecutor, or Harry Etheridge, the famous congressman. But his father would have black dog days: he could hardly talk or stir, he'd sit in the dark, and just stare out at nothing. What was dogging him? The war? Some sense of his own luck? A feeling for the fragility of it? Memories of all the bullets that had been fired at him, and the shells, and how nothing had hit him in his vitals? That kind of luck had to run out, and Daddy knew it, but he went out anyway, and it killed him.
What could save you?
Nothing. If it was in the cards, by God, it was in the cards, and Daddy knew that, and faced up to it like a man, looked it in the eyes and spat in its black-cat face, until at last it reared up and bit him in a cornfield on the Polk County line.
Nothing could save you. Bob pressed on, sliding deeper into the fog. Odd how it clung, like clouds of wet wool, he'd never seen anything like it in the "Nam, and this here was his third tour.
The fear began to eat at him, as it always did. Some fools said he had no fear, he was such a hero, but that only proved how little they knew. The fear was like a cold lump of bacon grease in his stomach, hard and wet and slick, that he could taste and feel at all times. You could not make it go away, you could not ignore it, and anybody who said you could was the worst damned kind of fool.
Go on, be scared, he ordered himself. Let it rip. This may be it. But the one thing that scared him most of all wasn't dying, not really, it was the idea of not doing the job. That was something to fear in the heart. He would do the job, by God, that he would.
Trees. He slid through them, tree to tree, his eyes working, testing, looking for possibilities. A hide? A fallback? A line of movement not under fire? A good field of fire? Damn this fog, could he even see them? Could he read ranges, gauge the drop on the long shots? Cover or just concealment? Where was the sun? Nope, didn't matter, no sun.
A thin, cold rain had begun to fall. How would that affect the trajectory? What was the wind, the humidity?
How wet was the stock of the rifle? Had it bloated and was now some little swollen knot rubbing secretly against the barrel, fucking up his point of impact? Had the scope sprung a leak, and was now a tube of fog, worthless, leaving him with nothing?
Or: were there NVA ahead? Had they heard him coming?
Were they laughing as he bumbled closer? Were they drawing a bead even as he considered the possibility? He tried to exile the fear as he had exiled his own past and future, and concentrate on the mechanical, the aspect of craft that lay before him, how he would reload fast enough if it came to that, since the Remingtons didn't have no stripper clips and the M1 18 had to be threaded in one round at a time. Should he set up his two Claymores to cover his flanks? He didn't think he had time.
Help me, he prayed to a God he wasn't sure existed, maybe some old gunny up there above the clouds, just watching out for bad boys like him on desperate jobs for people who didn't even know his name.
He halted. He was in trees, had good tree cover, and good fog, a fallback to a hilltop, and then he could cut back the other direction. Professionally, he saw that this was it. A perfect choke point, with targets in the open, fog to cover him, a rare opportunity to get at the NVA in the open, lots of ammunition.
If this is it, by God, then this is it, he thought, settling in behind a fallen tree, literally slipping into a bush, as he squirmed to find a good position. He found his prone, and although he couldn't get one leg flat on the ground for the gouge of a rock or a stump, he got most of his body down, drawing stability from the earth itself. The rifle was back and in, left grip lightly on the forearm, sling tight as it ran from the wood, lashed around that forearm and headed tautly to the stock. Right hand on the small of the stock, finger still off the trigger. Breathing easy, trying to stay cool. Another day at the office. He was situated so no light would reflect off his lens. The trees around him would muffle and defuse the sound of the shots. In the first minutes, anyhow, no one would be able to figure out where the shots were coming from.
He slid his eye behind the scope, finding the proper three inches of relief. Nothing. It was like peering into a bowl of cream. Drifting whiteness, the outline of two or three scrub trees, no sense of the hills forming the other side of the valley, a slight downward angle into vertigo.
Nothing stood out from which to estimate range.
He checked his watch: 0700 hours. They would be along soon, not moving quite so quickly because of the fog, but confident that it hid them and that in hours they'd be in possession of Arizona.
So come on, you bastards.
What are you waiting for?
Then he saw one. It was the hunter's thrill after the long stalk, that magical moment when the connection between hunter and hunted, fragile as a china horse, first establishes itself. Blood rushed through him: old buck fever.
Everybody gets it when they see the beast they will kill and eat, that's how primordial it is.
I will not eat you, he thought, but by God I will kill you.
More emerged. Jesus Christ ... the first thin line of sappers in cloth hats with foliage attached, rifles at the high port, eyes strained, at maximum alertness, more tightly bunched, an infantry platoon, battle ready, caped and pith-helmeted, chest web gear, green Bata boots and AKs, Type 56, and no other identifying insignia, the platoon leaders
at the front, behind them in a tight little knot the staff, their ranks unrecognizable in the muddy uniforms.
You never saw this. A North Vietnamese infantry battalion moving at the half-trot through a choke point in tight formation, not spread out for four thousand meters or broken down and moving in cells to reassemble under dark. The pilots never saw it, the photos never got it. The NVA, goddamn their cold, professional souls, were too quick, too subtle, too disciplined, too smart for such movement. They moved at night, in small units, then reassembled, or they moved through tunnels, or in bomb-free Cambo or Laos, always careful, risking nothing, knowing surely that the longer they bled the American beast, the better their chances became. Possibly no American had seen such a thing.
The CO was pushing them hard, gambling that he could beat the weather, whack out Arizona and be gone.
Speed was his greatest ally, the bleak weather his next.
The rain fell harder, pelting the ground, but it did not stop the North Vietnamese, who seemed not to notice.
Onward they came.
He snicked off the safety, and through the scope hunted for an officer, a radio operator, an ammunition bearer with RPGs, an NCO, a machine-gun team leader.
The targets drifted before him, floating through the crucifer of the crosshairs. That he was about to kill never occurred to him, the way his mind worked, he thought only that he was about to shoot.
Finally: you, little brother. An officer, youngish, with the three stars of a captain lieutenant, at the head of an infantry platoon. He would go first, then, back swiftly, to a radio operator, then, swing left as you run the bolt, and go for the guy with the Chicom RPD 56, put him down, then fall back. That was the plan, and any plan was better than no plan.
The reticle of the Redfield scope wobbled downward, bouncing ever so slightly, tracking the first mark, staying with him as the shooter took his long breath, hissed a half of it out, found bone to lock under the rifle, told himself again to keep the gun moving as he fired, prayed to God for mercy for all snipers, and felt the trigger break cleanly.
CHAPTER thirteen.
"Gooooooood morning, Vietnam," said the guy on VT Captain Taney's portable, "and hello to all you guys out there in the rain. Well, fellas, I've got some bad news.
Looks like that old Mr. Sun is still A.W.O.L.. That's UA, for you leathernecks. Nobody's gonna stop the rain today. But it'll be great for the flowers, and maybe Mr. Victor Charles will stay indoors himself today, because his mommy won't let him outside to play."
"What a moron," said Captain Taney, Arizona's XO.
"The weather should break tonight, as a high pressure zone over the Sea of Japan looks like it's making a beeline for--" "Shit," said Puller.
Why did he put himself through this? It would break when it would break.
Standing in the parapet outside his command bunker, he glanced around in the low light, watching the floating mist as it seethed through the valley that lay beyond.
Should he put an OP out there, so they'd know when the 803rd was getting close?
But he no longer controlled the hills, so putting an OP out there would just get its people all killed.
The rain began to fall, thin and cold. Vietnam! Why was it so cold? He had spent so many days in country over the past eight years but never had felt it this biting before.
"Not good, sir," said Taney.
"No, it isn't, Taney."
"Any idea when they'll get here?"
"You mean Huu Co? He's already here. He pushed 'em hard through the night and the rain. He's no dummy.
He wants us busted before our air can get up."
"Yes, sir."
"You have that ammo report ready, Captain?"
"Yes, sir. Mayhorne just finished it. We have twelve thousand rounds of 5.56 left, and a couple more thousand30 carbine rounds. We're way low on frags, seventy-nine rounds and belted 7.62. Not a Claymore in the camp."
"Christ."
"I've got Mayhorne distributing the belted 7.62, but we're down to five guns and I can't cover any approach completely. We can set up a unit of quick-movers with one of the guns to jump to the assault sector, but if he hits us more than one place at once, we screw the pooch."
"He will," said Puller bleakly.
"That's how he operates.
The pooch is screwed."
"You know, sir, some of these "Yards have family here in the compound. I was thinking--" "No," said Puller.
"If you surrender, Huu Co will kill them all. That's how he operates. We hang on, pray for a break in the weather, and if we have to, go hand to hand in the trenches with the motherfuckers."
"Was it ever this bad in sixty-five, sir?"
Puller looked at Taney, who was about twenty-five, a good young Spec Forces captain with a tour behind him.
But in sixty-five he'd been a high school hotshot, what could you tell him? Who could even remember?
"It was never this bad, because we always had air and there were plenty of firebases around. I've never felt so fucking on my own. That's what trying to be the last man out gets you, Captain. Let it be a lesson. Get out, get your people out. Copy?"
"I copy, sir."
"Okay, get the platoon leaders and the machine gun team leaders to my command post in fifteen and--" They both heard it.
"What was that?"
"It sounded like a--" Then another one came. A solitary rifle shot, heavy, obviously .308, echoing back and forth across the valley.
"Who the fuck is that?" Taney said.
"That's a sniper," said Puller.
They waited. It was silent. Then the third shot and Puller could read the signature of the weapon.
"He's not firing fast enough for an M14. He's shooting a bolt gun, and that means he's a Marine."
"A Marine? Way the hell out here in Indian Territory?"
"I don't know who this guy is, but he sounds like he's doing some good."
Then came a wild barrage of full automatic fire, the lighter, crisper sound of the Chicom 7.62X39mm the AKs fired.
Then the gunfire fell silent.
"Shit," said Taney.
"Sounds like they got him," The sniper fired again.
"Let's run the PRC-77 and see if we can pick up enemy radio intelligence," Puller said.
"They must be buzzing about this like crazy."
Puller and his XO and Sergeant Bias and Y Dok, the "Yard chieftain, all went down into the bunker.
"Cameron," Puller said to his commo NCO, "you think you've got any juice left in the PRC-77?"
"Yes, sir."
"Let's do a quick scan. See if you can get me enemy freaks. They ought to be close enough to pick up."
"Yes, sir. Sir, if air comes and we need to talk 'em in--" "Air isn't coming today, Cameron. Not today. But maybe someone else has."
Cameron fiddled with the radio mast on the PRC-77, snapping a cord so that it flew free above the wood and dirt of the roof, then clicked it on, and began to diddle with the frequency dials.
"They like to operate in the twelve hundreds," he said.
He pulled through the nets, not bringing anything up except static, the fucking United States Navy bellowing about beating the Air Force Academy in a basketball game and-"Shit."
"Yeah," said Puller, leaning forward.
"Can't you get us in a little tighter?"
"It's them, isn't it, sir?" asked Taney.
"Oh, yes, yessy, yessy, yessy," said the head man Y Dok, who wore the uniform of a major in the ARVN, except for the red tribal scarf around his neck, "yep, is dem, yep, is dem!" He was a merry little man with blackened teeth and an inexhaustible lust for war, afraid, literally, of nothing.
"Dok, can you follow?" asked Puller, whose Vietnamese was good but not great. He was getting odd words-attack, dead, halt--and he couldn't follow the verb tenses, they seemed to be describing a world he couldn't imagine.
"Oh, he say they under assault on right by platoon strength of marksmen. Snipers. The snipers come for them. Ma my, 'A
merican ghosts. He says most officers dead, and most machine gun team leaders also--oh! Oh, now he dead too. Y Dok hear bullet hit him as he talk. Good shit, I tell you, Major Puller, got good deaths going, oh, so very many good deaths."
"A platoon?" said Taney.
"The nearest Marine firebase is nearly forty klicks away, if it hasn't rotated out.
How could they get a platoon over here? And why would they send a platoon?"
"It's not a platoon," said Puller.
"They couldn't--no, not overland, across that terrain, not without being bounced. But a team."
"A team?"
"Marine sniper teams are two-men shows. They can move like hell if they have to. Jesus, Taney, listen to this and be aware of the privilege you've been accorded. What you are hearing is one man with a rifle taking on a battalion-strength unit of about three hundred men."
"Dey say dey got him," said Y Dok.
"Shit," said Taney.
"God bless him," said Puller.
"He put up a hell of a fight."
"Dey say, 'American is dead and head man say, You fellas get going, you got to push on to the end of the valley and de officer say, Yes, yes, he going to--oh. Oh ho ho ho!" He laughed, showing his blackened little teeth.
"No. No, no, no, no. He got dem! Oh, yes, he just killed man on radio. I hear scream. Oh, he is a man who knows the warrior's walk, dot I know. He got the good deaths, very many, going on."
"You can say that again," said Puller.
CHAPTER fourteen.
When the trigger broke, the North Vietnamese captain lieutenant turned as if to look at Bob just once before he died. All the details were frozen for a second: he was a small man, even by NVA standards, with binoculars and a pistol. An instant ago, he had been full of life and zeal. When the bullet struck him, it sucked everything from him and he stood with grave solemnity, colorless, as all the hopes and dreams departed him. If he had a soul, this would be where it fled to whatever version of heaven sustained him. Then it was over: with the almost stiff dignity of formal ceremony, he toppled forward.
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